Essays on topics economics: monopolists, oligopolists, and oligarchs aren't better decision-makers for the society just because they's rich and they ain't the gummint.

Anarchy Favors the Rich

He's a fucking moron.-- Rex Tillerson/2017 (guess who he is?)

Today, states containing just 17 percent of the American population, a historic low, can theoretically elect a Senate majority-- Emily Badger/2016

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. -- Victor Hugo/1845

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.-- Marriner Eccles

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.-- Neil deGrasse Tyson/2015 (possibly earlier)

For the median household in the U.S., a top corporate marginal rate cut from 35 to 20 percent would boost wage growth almost four-fold -- from the current 0.6 percent per year to as much as 2 percent, providing up to $7000 of additional income.-- Kevin Hassett/2017Hassett's argument is that if we stop artificial 'profit shifting' (corporations reporting that their profits were earned in low-tax countries, when they were really earned in the U.S.), then somehow they'll magically decide to raise wages for U.S. workers. It makes no sense.-- Seth Hanlon/2017

09 January 2017

It's Always The Arithmetic

A few times, these endeavors have made mention of the fact that average cost is what really matters to the MBA Masters of The World, not the marginal cost of economists. Folks like the putative Labor Secretary Puzder, who prefers robots to people in his production, just assume that machines are better than people. Leaving aside, for the moment, that machines don't take their value add based wages and buy output, capitalization based production does have, at least, one downside: fixed cost.

The two operating units at the Indian Point Energy Center will close in 2020-2021 after powering New York for more than four decades with clean, safe, and reliable electricity. The early and orderly shutdown is part of a settlement under which New York State has agreed to drop legal challenges and support renewal of the operating licenses for Indian Point, located in the Village of Buchanan in northern Westchester County. The shutdown will complete Entergy's exit from its merchant power business because of sustained low wholesale energy prices.

In other words: with energy conservation, and alternative sources, the amortization of nukes might not make sense. There's more evidence of the problem. Don't put those panels on your roof!!

Industry officials say they support their customers' right to generate electricity on their own property, but they say rooftop solar's new popularity is creating a serious cost imbalance. While homeowners with solar panels usually see dramatic reductions in their electric bills, they still rely on the grid for electricity at night and on cloudy days. The utility collects less revenue, even though the infrastructure costs -- from expensive power plants to transmission lines and maintenance crews -- remain the same.

Now, apply the same complaint to healthcare... Reduce demand (by fiat of King Donald of Orange) for capacity already installed, and you'll find the 1% squealing that their healthcare costs have actually gone up.

It's always that damned arithmetic. That a six year old understands. Read the whole Post story, and you'll see that much of the rhetoric is just propaganda, and the tentacles of Koch is documented. And, whatever happened to The Cube?